As a YouTube culture, we’re inundated with the “supercut”: the cutting together of disparate clips to observe a trope, a theme or an overwhelming feeling. The sugar rush of a great supercut can be fantastic, but nothing compares to the seismic, stimulating and lasting wave of brainfood that is Thom Andersen’s legendary 2003 essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself, comprised entirely of clips from films shot on location in our fair city. This is a trip that ALL Angelenos, whether you’re new to the Southland or whether you’re born-and-raised, should absolutely take. Over its three-hour running time, Andersen (a long-running faculty member of CalArts’ cinema studies program) zig-zags from classics to (then-)new releases, from forgotten obscurities to iconic list-toppers, from foreign viewpoints to local heroes — all tied together by the themes of how our city’s surroundings are portrayed as background, as character and as subject. Previously only the province of special anniversary screenings and bootleg downloads, Los Angeles Plays Itself comes to the Cinefamily screen in a brand-new HD remaster, ready to be enjoyed for generations to come.
Dir. Thom Andersen, 2003, DCP, 169 min.